…for those of you indulging in ultra-right-commenters-safari, check out the thread under this pic. The pic depicts two Palestinian girls in their early teens being detained by IDF troops. The page admins wrongly identifies them as Jewish left-wing activists. A selection of the comments: “Rape and a bullet through the head.” “Finally they arrest the terrorist sluts, look at them crying over missing the chance to get fucked by the entire village” “Cut them into pieces slowly so they suffer before they die” “Go on, cry, at least we’ll use vaselin, in Nebi Saleh they will fuck you dry” “Someone should publish where they live.”

‎

Liran, the younger one is the daughter of Narimin Tamimi, wife of Bassem Tamimi. She is 10 years old. The older girl is a first cousin. She is 11 years old. They live in Nabi Saleh. I know them and I guess quite a few people reading this thread know them too.

Update: Mondo reader Shmuel adds in the comments below:

Translation note: “lezayen” (lit. fuck) in this context means “fuck over” or something like that. In other words it is violent and shocking (especially in reference to a child) and part of the sexist and sexualised vocabulary of the occupation, but not specifically sexual in meaning.

About Annie Robbins

Annie Robbins is Editor at Large for Mondoweiss, a mother, a human rights activist and a ceramic artist. She lives in the SF bay area. Follow her on Twitter @anniefofani

“Wonder where those lowlife depraved squatters come from. Not the United States, by any chance?”>>>>>>>>>

LOL…no doubt some do. But since US police aren’t assigned to accompany or protect street gangs and thugs theses settlers would be subject to getting the [email protected] beat out of them or hauled off to jail most anywhere here for this trash talking. I don’t want to even describe what would happen to them if one even threatened to fuck over 3,4, or 7 year olds in my neck of the woods. But’s it satisfying to imagine.

— true from mid-1939 on, but a lot less so before that. Ask anyone whose father or grandfather served in the Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, for instance. They were labelled “premature anti-fascists” by the State Department.

I presume that was not so much for admiring the nazis, but the fear of communists. On the republican side in Spain there were whole brigades of international communists, being supplied with arms by the SU.
That civil war was a proxy fight leading up to WWII.

I think Theo’s view here is more accurate than Munger’s. It wasn’t so much liking for the Nazis as hostility towards Communism.

As I recall, Hitler was actually a big admirer of what Roosevelt was doing in America to combat the Depression — which in many respects was very similar to what Hitler himself was doing at the same time.

He wrote an admiring fan letter to Roosevelt in 1933 or 1934. Roosevelt either ostentatiously didn’t answer or answered in very hostile terms. Moreover, our press was extremely critical of Nazi Germany. While various degrees of admiration for Nazi Germany were more or less common currency in France, England, and other European countries, here such views were very marginal. See, for example, the reception Lindbergh got when he came back full of praise for Goring’s Luftwaffe.

…just about every European country seems to have had a fascist party that modelled itself on either Hitler, Mussolini, or both. In France, there was the Croix de Feu. In England the Blackshirts. In Ireland the Greenshirts. There was the Falange in Spain. The Iron Guard in Rumania. There was the Green Arrow or something in Hungary. And that’s just what comes to mind.

…but I can’t think of anything equivalent here. While we were also resolutely isolationist, we were also resolutely uninterested in Naziism.

1. The settler’s first recorded words are “I don’t go to her house; she mustn’t come to mine”. Settlers don’t do irony very well.

2. There was something military about the settler’s bearing, speech and the way he spoke to the soldiers, so I took a closer look at his shirt, and it’s a school shirt from the Otzem religious military academy (formerly located on a settlement in Gaza). This guy is probably a future IDF officer.

Translation note: “lezayen” (lit. fuck) in this context means “fuck over” or something like that. In other words it is violent and shocking (especially in reference to a child) and part of the sexist and sexualised vocabulary of the occupation, but not specifically sexual in meaning.

shmuel, i think you might have meant ‘to fuck her up’ (distinct from someone who is a ‘fuck up’, i.e. a loser), which is to deal violently with, while ‘to fuck over’ means to exploit or take advantage of.

In the US fuck up or fuck over usually means to “mess someone up”..as in physically beating them up or ‘hurting them’ in some other way. It’s not usually slang for actually f****** someone sexually that I’ve ever heard.

I’m still confused after watching…are the girls on a Jews only path or territory? Or some Palestine path adjacent to a settlement or what?

It’s plain the girls are making a statement with the flags.. not that it matters in the settler threats. ..I’m trying to figure out the IDF posture.
I will allow the possibility that the IDF solider said ‘no problem’ to forestall the thug running to get more thugs and making it worse.

But where was this taking place? And what was the asking about if Jews were also not allowed?

american, the weekly protest in nabi saleh, as i understand it, are walks from the village thru their land to their spring. this is likely the road to their spring and the children ran ahead. the iof are blocking the road. the photographers are likely jewish and the settler asks if they are allowed to be there, hence the settler says @ :36 (according to the video translation) “come here is a photographer , ya son of a bitch you’re a jew? ya f’ing bitch you’re a jew…which side are you on ya f’cker?”..then he asks the soldiers if the road was closed to jews too (meaning to kick off the photographer i assume) and then the soldier calls his superiors and asks if it was closed to jews (iof serving the settler request). that is how it appears to me.

o.k….so this is the road to the Palestines spring but not exactly within the settlers settlement property but they want to prevent Palestines from using it.
I got the part using the captions of the ” ya son of a bitch you’re a jew?” but didn’t see the ““come here is a photographer” part and couldn’t tell who it was said to.

I think it may be possible to define what we’re seeing a bit more closely.

First, would the reaction have been as vociferous if the children had been suitably dusky? Probably not — I suspect a good deal of the outrage comes from a sense of betrayal. The ‘war’ needs to be defined as between a white ‘us’ and a dehumanized, visibly darker ‘them.’ These girls violate that.

Second, the ready threats of sexual violence really are astonishing. I generally can at least understand the motives of my opponents. I can see where they are coming from — not that they seem to appreciate it if I tell them.

The comments are not offensive to me so much as simply incomprehensible. Who would react like this? My impulse is to call the pound and tell them there are rabid dogs on the loose. Their mental vocabulary contains drives and responses I simply don’t understand. Who wants to rape ten year old girls?

I still think the ‘whiteness’ of the children has a lot to do with the response. There was a similar video from a while back…a toddler howling and trying to interfere as soldiers dragged his father away.

However, that toddler was suitably dusky — and if there was a similarly hysterical reaction from the Zionist peanut gallery, I missed it.

CW: The ‘war’ needs to be defined as between a white ‘us’ and a dehumanized, visibly darker ‘them.’

Colin, I don’t think it is just some Israelis who want to see things in such simplistic terms. More than a few commenters here on Mondoweiss insist on seeing this as a conflict between “white” or ”European” Israelis and “brown-skinned” Palestinians, it’s just that now the first is labelled “bad”. I hope you haven’t fallen into this trap.

But on a more positive note, once there is a single-state it will not be possible to separate people into different religious groups based just on skin tone.

On the one hand, on a certain level I suppose I have fallen into this trap. Whatever I may intellectually realize, viscerally to at least some degree I perceive Israelis as ‘White’ and Palestinians as not.

On the other hand, in my case I’m not sure this does Israel any good. When I see that somebody like Alicia Silverstone is Jewish, it just makes the proposition that Jews come from the Levant and hence have some kind of title to it that much more obviously ridiculous. Sure, Netanyahu is ‘White.’ He looks like the Pole that he is, and has no more business laying claim to a slice of Palestine than I do.

You probably need to live a little in Syria and Palestine. You’d stop thinking of the people there, regarding skin eye hair hues, as some kind of Black African (no disrespect to any Africans intended.) Gauls, Greeks, Tatars, Arabs, Normans, etc. have invaded, settled and multiplied. Very visibly. As for appearance, the inhabitants of BC Palestine were already mighty mixed. On the other side, today’s Ashkenazi have lured Ethiopians, Bukharis, Goans and other “2nd-class Jews” into participating in their invasion and rape. So let’s stop that nonsense.

So what we see here is another attempt at provocation
by the “Activists” this time using small children because it looks so much better on camera and if they do get hurt by any chance it’s even better.
A morally questionable tactic but i guess the end justifies the means.

/oleg, this is their town and their land so who’s provoking who/
Now you know that we won’t reach agreement on this issue so lets not go there.

/ Soldier asking if jews could enter or if the closure applied to jews too?/

Sure, he was referring to the activists that were filming this little farce.
I hope the answer was yes fair is fair.

I would like to emphasize again that all of this civillian protest is fine by me
i don’t find it offensive or illegitimate.
I would like to make a point that the use of children as a means of creating a provocation is extremely questionable and if they do get hurt it will be on
the conscience of their parents.

Regarding the comments on Facebook they are stupid, evil, repulsive,
ugly and every other epithet you want to use .

I would suggest thought that before MW with it’s strict premoderation
policy on comments goes into a righteous fit the site should suspend that policy and let the people around here speak their mind as freely
and as politely as they want.

hundreds of children have been arrested in the middle of the night. hundreds. so who is provoking people to leave their village by the arrest of children. it’s called land theft and ethnic cleansing via using the children of a town to get to the adults. the nerve of you! photographing little children in the middle of the night, stealing them from their families for months and months and you try blaming the parents.

“He (Oleg) is cold, detached and vile. He is, in a word, a Zio-supremacist.
Poor him feels threatened by facts. He lets his inbuilt survival defense mechanism do the job at accepting his nauseating self. What do you want him to do? See the ugly reality for what it is and admit it? That’s like committing suicide. As much as I’d like him to do just that, it’s not going to happen.
I often wonder why this vulgar, politically sleazy character hasn’t been banned yet but I came to welcome the idea of seeing him around. It a window into the disease that is the Zionist mind. It’s a wealth of information.

i don’t want him to commit suicide tgia. he’s not necessarily any of those things, he could be just doing his job, providing a function like a cog in the wheel. he may very well not be detached nor vile, but instead brainwashed.

but somewhere in that brain of his he knows it is wrong for he is human. he sleeps, he dreams, and he has a conscience. he’s programmed by life and that program has taught him to defend, rationalize, justify..and that is what he knows. but he has an inner being and that inner being knows this is wrong. i continue to believe that.

it’s so sad. so very very sad. but..he’s just doing his job and i feel sorry for him. maybe the same way phil said he felt sorry for the girl at the airport, the one avi left over. but the mind is a complex organism and things are not cut and dried. people run in herds and this israeli nationalistic herd/ilk is now really pressing against human decency..the limits of human patience and understanding and that is why we say these things. but i believe there is a difference between oleg and that settler..i hope so anyway. that settler is more akin to rabid dog, the kind the spca just puts down. but i do not believe oleg is there, he has a mind and that mind is mutable and has a conscience. it may be submerged. there are likely soldiers there on the scene like him, ones who will turn. people turn and this will turn. i have hope and faith because i believe most people are good or have the potential for goodness. this is a very sad time. if these were adults instead of children people wouldn’t listen. remember it was that little boy crying for his father who ‘stole’ the village water from the settlement that beinart cited. and even then the hasbarists claimed it was staged. so this is par for the course.

breath and carry on. just breathe and carry on.

palestine will be free..someday. we have to believe and have faith in humanity. people, the human race will turn this around.

tgia: I have said this before, but I cannot understand why you and so many other decent people on this list waste their time arguing with the likes of OlegR.

Annie: How does the relation between the “rabid dog” settler and OlegR differ from the relation between a sadist recruited by the Nazi security agencies and the Brahms-and-Hayden-loving intellectuals who probably never tortured anyone but defended the behavior of those who did?

Why should Brahms-and-Hayden-loving intellectuals shy away from authentic experience of bonding with the soil while removing the alien blood from it?

We have seen an interview with a successful Argentinian businessman who decided to be a settler while also collecting art pieces and wines. He said that he would like his children to settle on a remote hilltop and to commute regularly to concert halls in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. He did not specify Brahms, perhaps children would like Wagner instead?

their villagers have been cut off from their own land and their own water source and these children grow up with this it is what they know, it is all they know and resisting is their WAY OF LIFE and they are BORN INTO IT. you want to stop it? STOP THE THEFT. palestinians are surviving and raising their children to survive and to resist their own ethnic cleansing from their own land and their own home so please you are barking up the wrong tree lecturing me.

don’t use your own warped perceptions and conflate they are accurate or reflect my opinion.

I would like to make a point that the use of children as a means of creating a provocation

yeah, i heard you the first time when you also claimed because it looks so much better on camera AS IF this wasn’t going on before people started filming it. this is all merely your allegations.

this is their town and their land so who’s provoking who/
Now you know that we won’t reach agreement on this issue so lets not go there.

ha!..redirect redirect, oleg doesn’t want to face reality! this is not in israel ‘proper’, this is the land of nabi saleh, it’s their home! the settlers set up camp and want nabi saleh’s village spring and they get their little messiah’s donkeys, the iof, to carry out their expansion efforts. so we all know exactly what’s going on here. settlers don’t allow palestinians to visit their own spring! so by all means just because we disagree please do not shy away from ‘going there’ in terms of your explanation. oh no, you wanna make some allegation and claim it’s mine and i use it to justify. ha! you crack me up. #hasbarafail

“This is a regular ritual occurs every Friday. A small group of Palestinians from the village of Nabi Saleh, augmented with some leftist Tel Aviv-looking and some volunteers from the Diaspora, riot and attacks violently soldiers. Rib their second, journalists Palestinians and photographers organizations, document everything and within hours of upload to YouTube a few minutes are arranged well, connection between what happened in not always clear. these photographs, of Palestinians, they are usually the only source of Israeli media what is happening an hour off.
It all started a few months ago the struggle around the fountain located 30 meters from the fence settlement Neve nectar, about a kilometer from the villages of Nabi Saleh and Deir Nizam near Ramallah. In recent years, community members have developed the spring, placed a bench and shed, planted trees, brought goldfish and put up a sign in memory of one of their members. One day began to flow to where the surrounding villages, accompanied by the cameras ‘image’, arguing that the spring theirs. IDF forces tried to stop them as they approached the town, were pelted with stones and beaten. Mirrors One of them shattered, the PLO flag hung on the antenna, the shed was torched. Youth of the community, who joined the riot, rioters threw stones at Arabs. IDF, the standard UN envoy, tried to mediate. Senior officers sat with the parties. Eventually the Civil Administration decided that an archaeological area will be open to everyone. When the Deir Nizam demanded that the settlers would lower the Israeli flag from the spring, they got what they wanted. Further spilled oil spring, killing the fish, then burned the bench.
When the Arabs demanded work their fields adjacent undisturbed, the army gave his word that he would. Several times found themselves soldiers standing around the field and secure farmers whose families are on the other side and throwing stones. While residents of Deir Nizam were satisfied and relaxed, Nabi Saleh understood activists The radical left that opportunity shame to give up on her. True spring issue was resolved and the separation fence in Bil’in do not like the area, but fire lit rope off just like that.
Since they rioters there every Friday. Israeli media, if she wanted, she could get there every week reporters. Instead, she prefers to receive reports of telephone Palestinians and download YouTube the scenes they filmed and edited. Of their injuries, the grandfather of their grandfather showered spring hundreds of years ago and the settlers taking their fields. Thus, even when the new systems receive information from the IDF roadblocks, the stone throwing and Palestinian attacks on Jews passengers along the way, this information can reach the consumer level at best as a report on the “confrontation between the parties.”
On several occasions, as mentioned, took television channels prepared materials received from the Palestinians and put them on the evening news after undergoing further editing them. Take the Palestinian tendentious, add it to that of the Israeli press and you can guess what you get. This was, for example, a few months ago when the light Heller Channel 10 removed from the network segment where looks Arabs attacked and beat the soldiers. Heller cut out the most passages “damning” and told viewers to “peaceful demonstration.” To empower the story is also duct article pictures taken on another occasion, another event entirely.
Two weeks ago, on the outbreak of the World Cup, I was there. This is a media project from start to finish. Take away the photographers and no nothing. Until just before the kickoff for the riots are locals and soldiers are intertwined. Arabs their tasks, soldiers waiting for the opening of the battle. Few minutes before the business starts to sink resident of the press photographers Palestinian activists and foreign organizations in the right places. These place the tripods and wait. While the muezzin finished the prayer lunch gathering a few dozen at the mosque and begin to walk in front of soldiers left to right and back. peaceful protest. neat.
After a short time someone decides to change gears. When two masked men appear among the marchers know deputy brigade commander, Lt. Col. Dawn Shitrit, we identified just before the outbreak. In a moment, like a predictable script, start flying stones. The parties separated at this point maybe 30 yards. The soldiers, who make sure not to cross the line entrance to the village, taking cover behind armored jeeps. Stones flying left and right. The soldiers were hiding. Did not respond. Several dozen Palestinians climb a nearby hill overlooking the entrance to the village and at a distance of a hundred yards, professionally fantastic start to bomb using with semi stones of all kinds. An enumeration of those present must find that if you take adhere to the rioters the photographers and Ashkenazi Gush Dan, you got my demonstration. For a long time the jeeps continue to absorb a barrage of stones. Deputy company commander hit in the mouth. Twenty minutes later a teacher XO fighters Police fire tear gas. Arabs were not moved. After about fifteen minutes, when the terms are reduced and more targeted vulnerability, given command and the soldiers running toward the hill. Center of the village, near the mosque, were able to arrest three. One of Tel Aviv, one of Barcelona and one from New York, identified as having thrown the stone that struck the officer. First, an extreme left has experience on such occasions, immediately launched into a speech to the camera, obviously without which there is no reason for this sweaty frenzy here. American, chubby looks did not exercise for a long time, lay down and closed his eyes in the face of the photographer. The next day, when I saw the movie on YouTube taken by a Palestinian, I held my stomach. The man seems to be there when he lay motionless, his eyes closed, when Palestinian hysterical screaming over his head “is going to die.” What a shame that viewers all over the world could see it, like me, a few minutes later, sitting in a jeep, alive as ever. Even the Palestinian violence, by the way, you can not see these films, just as it does not appear on the screens of our news channels.
After four hours dispersed them. Photographers, full of a lot pictures of soldiers with rifles, were theirs. Before he began one of the soldiers gambled everything the game between South Africa and Mexico will end the campaign early. Bingo. An hour before kickoff of the village fell silent. A few hours later came the weekly propaganda video network. You can bet that the next time the Israeli media report from Nabi Saleh lazy about “white intifada”, “peace activists” or “human rights activists”, it will probably through cameras and editing rooms of the Palestinians.”

OlegR,
Aside from the fact that the Israeli thieves have no right to do anything at all to this Palestinian spring, putting goldfish in a spring is certainly not an “improvement.” Introducing a non-native species is stupid, and goldfish foul the water quickly.

It’s an “improvement” in the same way that it was an “improvement” to plant all those non-native trees that created an inferno in Mount Carmel: clueless and destructive.

/their villagers have been cut off from their own land and their own water source /

Went digging a little bit about the water source .
This is the spring we are talking about just to be clear.
According to the settlers (to whom you obviously don’t believe)
the spring was disused for years until the youth from the settlement renovated it in 2006. It became the source of these clashes only in 2009.

uh huh, because the village people would have no use for a spring until the settlers came?

he is a good reporter the tries to stick to the facts

the facts according to the settlers? or did he interview palestinians too? who told him the villagers didn’t use that spring until after the settlers ‘fixed it up’. hmm, where have i heard that theme before? let me think…i know it rings a bell…some land nobody paid any attention to until jews ‘returned’ to it? (not to be confused with the ordinary concept of return, implying ones family was actually there in the past as opposed to the biblical era)

it’s right on the tip of my tongue, and i know it was a reporter who tried to stick to the facts..peters? was her name peters? anyway ..something about a land with no people, according to the zionists (to whom you obviously believe).

and another thing oleg…water wasn’t really a popular commodity before the zionists settlers showed up. so it make perfect sense palestinians would pay no mind to a spring until someone put a bench near it. for like..centuries they ignored that spring ….according to the ‘good’ reporter.

The report said an OCHA survey carried out in 2011 identified a total of 56 springs that were under total or partial control of Israeli settlers, most in the part of the West Bank known as Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and military control.

“Springs have remained the single largest water source for irrigation and a significant source for watering livestock” for Palestinians, OCHA said, noting that some springs also provide water for domestic consumption.

“The loss of access to springs and adjacent land reduced the income of affected farmers, who either stop cultivating the land or face a reduction in the productivity of their crops.”

The report said in most cases where settlers were trying to limit Palestinian access to springs, they have undertaken to turn the area into a tourist attraction, constructing pools, picnic areas and signs carrying a Hebrew name for the spring. […]

OCHA said the takeover of springs was an extension of settlement activity in the West Bank, which it pointed out is illegal under international law.

And it added that settler actions including “trespass, intimidation and physical assault, stealing of private property, and construction without a building permit,” are also violations of Israeli law.

/and another thing oleg…water wasn’t really a popular commodity before the zionists settlers showed up./

I have no idea what was the springs state was it used or not
again we are going back to who do we prefer to believe.
Everybody has stakes in this game.

The owner of the spring according to Betzelem is the head of the village
Bashir Tamimi
(lots of Tamimis in Nabi Slaeh i guess they are the ruling hamula of the village)
No relevant documents in Betzelem’s report just this claim.
Complaints about unlawfull taking of the spring were filed to the the civil administration and they are still under investigation.
Considering that Bilain and Nallin complaints were acknowledged
and afaik there are no more demonstrations there
i guess Nabi Salah case is not so clear cut as Betzelem and the Tamimi family claim.

I think that’s about it.
I don’t want to start going around in circles over this issue .
Hope nobody gets hurt over it again.

When I met Tamimi again a few days later in a coffee shop not far from the square, he told me about Gush Emunim’s arrival on the hilltop that was not yet called Halamish in 1976—he was nine years old—and about the settlers’ expropriation of the village’s land. Forty percent of what was once Nabi Saleh is now under the settlers’ control, he said, despite years of fighting in Israeli courts: “We can’t use it, we can’t farm it. They keep it empty for the settlement to expand.” (According to the Israeli NGO Peace Now, at least one third of Halamish was built on private land registered to Palestinians. The group filed a lawsuit against the settlement in 2009, and all construction there has been temporarily stopped.)

Tamimi talked about the olive groves the settlers had destroyed, the irrigation pipes they had torn up, the generators they had stolen that Palestinian farmers had used to pump water from the springs. There had been other springs too, he said, four or five of them, upon which Nabi Saleh and the neighboring village of Deir Nizam had depended for drinking water and irrigation. Now, he said, the springs could no longer be approached for fear of attacks by settlers.

The spring the Palestinians call Ein al-Qous—the one the settlers call Meir’s Spring—is smaller than the others, Tamimi said, but the farmers who worked the adjacent field relied on its water for years. When the youth of the settlement remade the spring as a sort of rustic spa in the summer of 2008, they began threatening the farmers, Tamimi said, “hitting them, beating them, scaring them,” and ultimately driving them away.

In December 2009, accompanied by Israeli and international activists, the residents of Nabi Saleh and other nearby villages first attempted to march down the hill to the spring. They were confronted, Tamimi said, by masked settlers with guns and by Israeli soldiers, who dispersed the crowd with tear gas and rubber bullets. Twenty-five marchers were injured.

The settlers responded to that first demonstration, Tamimi said, by burning a grove of olive trees. After the second demonstration, the army began sealing off the village and firing on the demonstrators as soon as they began to march. After the fourth, the soldiers began to enter the village, closing the roads and firing tear gas into homes. Almost all the houses in Nabi Saleh had broken windows, Tamimi said, and seven had been partially burned. The demonstrations continued. The army began to raid the village late at night, entering and searching homes, conducting interrogations, making arrests. Over fifteen months, sixty-three of the village’s 500 residents had been arrested: “The oldest is sixty years old, the youngest is eleven,” Tamimi said. Another 155 had been injured, sixty of them children. The worst of those was Ihab Barghouti, a twelve-year-old boy shot above the eye with a rubber bullet. He spent a week in a coma.

and while you are pushing your fantasy from the allegedly good reporter who the tries to stick to the facts who uses framing like ‘rioters’ maybe you should watch the opening of the video, because they look like protestors to me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBQpwNYMvUw

and don’t miss 7:48 in the video…to explain how the “editing rooms of the Palestinians” created this scene.

“Settlers have developed 40 springs as tourist sites, deployed picnic tables and benches and given them Hebrew names … It is generating employment and revenue for the settlements and it is a way of promoting or advertising settlements as a fun place,” OCHA researcher Yehezkel Lein said. […]

oleg, your own link lead to a page promoting tourism at springs. do you deny settlers are taking over springs and turning them into tourist attractions also or are you merely claiming palestinians didn’t use those springs for irrigation or any other reason. how many other natural springs do you think palestinians completely ignored until settlers arrived?

I don’t want to start going around in circles over this issue .

possibly because the tale you are spinning is completely devoid of logic. after all, it’s water we’re talking about, a resource that’s been considered vital to communities since the beginning of time. it’s not like the internet or some new invention. claiming palestinians didn’t appreciate or use a spring until after the settlers turned it into a tourist attraction is kind of stupid. and by all means read that harper’s story i linked to

I had arrived in Halamish two hours earlier. More accurately, I had arrived at the gate outside the settlement, where I spent an hour and a half at the guardhouse nagging a polite young man with an assault rifle to let me in, until another man, who introduced himself as Yogi—a round, balding fellow from St. Louis who wore a blue yarmulke and a .45 tucked into his belt—arrived in a Chevy Malibu and escorted me to the Blasses’ door. The rabbi and his wife are also American. Shifra, a small but intense woman whose floppy hat, rough skirt, and green wool jacket still bore a trace of the homespun settler aesthetic, explained that they had emigrated to Israel in the early 1970s, wishing to live, she said, “where Jews ought to live.”

On their honeymoon, the young Blasses toured the recently conquered West Bank. “One of the things that impressed us was how empty it was,” said the rabbi, gesturing out the window toward the rocky terraced hills rolling off into the haze. “It’s like you see now,” he said, “plenty of empty space.”

“There were no people there,” echoed Shifra. “It just seemed right.”

The couple joined Gush Emunim, the messianic nationalist movement founded in the wake of the 1973 war. Their goal, Shifra said, was “to settle the heart of Israel and rescue it from desolation.”

rescue the land from desolation!!!! because as everyone knows desolation kills land!

Oleg, I take it you are city person and unfamiliar with springs. I could understand the problem immediately from the settlers’ description of their “development” of the spring, and from looking at the picture of the pool that the settlers made from the spring, which they claimed was good for “washing children”.

The spring is clearly on land owned by the Tamimis. Both Peace Now and B’Tselem clearly indicate this, as well as indicating that Halamish itself is partially build on Nabi Saleh land. Even your settler source notes that the Tamimi’s planting fields are immediately adjacent to the spring. If you know anything about agriculture you would understand that it would be extremely unlikely that someone would choose not to own a spring immediately adjacent to his own growing fields, and clearly the Tamimi family has been in Nabi Saleh for many generations.

As for the settlers “development” of the spring, the word is misused. They simply made a recreational site out of it, damming it up and creating a pond with fish which, as anyone who understands rural water sources knows, effectively contaminated the source for any drinking use and possibly for any use in growing foodstuffs. In a semi-arid area like the West Bank, such use of water is sheer folly, committed by ignorant settlers with little understanding of the ecology of the region. Normal “development” of a spring involves creating a “spring box” to clarify the water, and a system of pipes and/or holding tanks to dispense the water where it is needed.

Betselem report on water in the OT.
It was in hebrew so i didn’t give the link.
It was based as far as i can tell on interviews with the Palestinians therefore
which obviously are not in favor of the settlers.
It also stated that Halamish was built on the ruins of a Jordanian military base (probably true i have been to Halamish once during my army duty)
and Betzelem asserts that 20% (not 40%) encroached on Palestinian
private land.
I’ll provide you the link if you wish tomorrow i don’t have it here.

/The spring is clearly on land owned by the Tamimis. Both Peace Now and B’Tselem clearly indicate this, as well as indicating that Halamish itself is partially build on Nabi Saleh land. /

Both Betzelem and Peace now cannot be considered disinterested objective parties in this dispute you know that as well as i do Tree.
And they are basing they indication upon testimonies form the Tamimis themselves which obviously say the land was theirs.

/If you know anything about agriculture you would understand that it would be extremely unlikely that someone would choose not to own a spring immediately adjacent to his own growing fields, and clearly the Tamimi family has been in Nabi Saleh for many generations./

Granted i don’t know a lot about agriculture and your assertions do make sense.There is a point to be made that the settlers said the spring was abandoned (i assume that also meant that the fields near it were not in use as well) .
Regarding the assertion that “and clearly the Tamimi family has been in Nabi Saleh for many generations.”
I don’t know about that the Tamimi hamula is fairly large and from what i have read mostly associated with Hebron which is pretty far from
Nabi Saleh , again that could be true i don’t know .

/Normal “development” of a spring involves creating a “spring box” to clarify the water, and a system of pipes and/or holding tanks to dispense the water where it is needed./
Apparently the Arab owners of the spring knew nothing of this as well
since there was no such thing around the spring before settlers renovated it (at least nobody claimed afaik that there was) so i guess we are going into the realms of speculations once again.

And they are basing they indication upon testimonies form the Tamimis themselves which obviously say the land was theirs.

solely? you mean you do not believe they researched this? seriously oleg,this doesn’t seem logical. in fact i do recall the peace now report was based on the government investigation that first revealed the intransigence of the israeli government. about 3 years ago. it was all over the news.

There is a point to be made that the settlers said the spring was abandoned (i assume that also meant that the fields near it were not in use as well) .

ha! the settler makes a claim (land with no people, poeple with no land!) and you make assumptions based on this? what planet are you on?

Both Betzelem and Peace now cannot be considered disinterested objective parties in this dispute you know that as well as i do Tree.

interest or disinterest is not proof of anything. if you have any evidence either b’tselem or peace now have ever fabricated anything or are not credible produce it. don’t base your argument on ..nothing.

Both Betzelem and Peace now cannot be considered disinterested objective parties in this dispute you know that as well as i do Tree.

They may not be “disinterested” but I see no indication that they are not objective. B’Tselem concerns itself with Israel’s rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza, which makes them interested in researching any allegation of such a violation, but I’ve seen no indication that their reports are not truthful and accurate, nor are they wildy made. You yourself cited a BTselem report in Hebrew ( which I would indeed love a link to, if you have it available, thanks), so you must consider it somewhat realiable yourself.

Granted i don’t know a lot about agriculture and your assertions do make sense.There is a point to be made that the settlers said the spring was abandoned (i assume that also meant that the fields near it were not in use as well) .

I judge sources by their history of accuracy or inaccuracy, and sad to say, most settler sources I’ve read or heard about tend to be wildly inaccurate or just downright untruthful. Logic would also tell me that a spring immediately adjacent to a growing field would not be “abandoned”, so given that settler sources tend to be wildly unreliable, I discount such an illogical statement as likely a lie. I have no reason not to believe that the settlers did in fact put a bench there and plant a tree and add goldfish to the pond. Logic says thats entirely possible, but again, that is not “development” of a spring, it is merely dressing it up as a recreation spot and does not give someone who doesn’t own the land the right to prohibit others from using it, which is what the settlers did.

Regarding the assertion that “and clearly the Tamimi family has been in Nabi Saleh for many generations.”I don’t know about that the Tamimi hamula is fairly large and from what i have read mostly associated with Hebron which is pretty far from Nabi Saleh , again that could be true i don’t know .

I used Wikipedia as a partial source for that:

The most prominent family in Nabi Salih is Tamimi. In a 1922 survey by the British Mandate of Palestine, there were 105 people living in Nabi Salih, rising to 144 in the 1931 census.[12] In Hadawi’s survey, Nabi Salih had 170 inhabitants in 1945.[1] In 1961, the population was 337, but decreased substantially after the Six-Day War in 1967, due to residents fleeing the site towards other Palestinian localities or Jordan. In 1982, the population reached 179.[12]
In the 1997 census by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Nabi Salih had a population of 371. Palestinian refugees constituted just 4.3% of the inhabitants.[16] According to the PCBS, the village had a population of 524 inhabitants in mid-year 2006.[17] The 2007 PCBS census recorded a population of 534.[18]

Apparently the Arab owners of the spring knew nothing of this as well since there was no such thing around the spring before settlers renovated it (at least nobody claimed afaik that there was) so i guess we are going into the realms of speculations once again

I think you failed to read annie’s quoted link from ewash. Tamimi did in fact claim that villagers used the spring, and that the settlers destroyed and/or stole their irrigation pipes and water pumps. I’ll repeat the applicable part here:

Tamimi talked about the olive groves the settlers had destroyed, the irrigation pipes they had torn up, the generators they had stolen that Palestinian farmers had used to pump water from the springs. There had been other springs too, he said, four or five of them, upon which Nabi Saleh and the neighboring village of Deir Nizam had depended for drinking water and irrigation. Now, he said, the springs could no longer be approached for fear of attacks by settlers.

The spring the Palestinians call Ein al-Qous—the one the settlers call Meir’s Spring—is smaller than the others, Tamimi said, but the farmers who worked the adjacent field relied on its water for years. When the youth of the settlement remade the spring as a sort of rustic spa in the summer of 2008, they began threatening the farmers, Tamimi said, “hitting them, beating them, scaring them,” and ultimately driving them away.) .

Again, the only “renovation” the settlers apparently did was building a partial overhead structure, adding goldfish to the pond (and possibly creating the pond, although the pond may have already been there, for all we know), and adding a bench and planting a small tree. Oh, and prohibiting the Nabi Saleh villagers from accessing it.

One missing detail from the Zionist story about Nabi Saleh is how it was concluded that settlers own the spring, and what is the nature of that “ownership”.

“Complaints about unlawfull taking of the spring were filed to the the civil administration and they are still under investigation.” I understand that “civil administration” is neither “civilian” nor “polite”, and in no way is it impartial. If “civil administration” cannot make a determination for several years, apparently it has some difficulties in declaring that the spring belongs to the settlers. It is quite unfatomable how “civil administration” determines which shit is OK and which it is not.

/solely? you mean you do not believe they researched this? seriously oleg,this doesn’t seem logical./

Is there an indication in Betzelems / Peace Now reports that you have seen
about their methodology in research .
What archives do they check (Taba , Ottoman ownership deeds ,Civil administration documents) what answers did they get from the civil administration regarding this spring etc.
If the Tamimis said they own the spring they must have shown some documentation to prove it besides “we lived here for hundreds of years ” claims to Betzelem, what was it?

I haven’t in the reports i have read.They are certainly well written and articulated but they are full of assertions without at least this sort of collaboration.

/ in fact i do recall the peace now report was based on the government investigation that first revealed the intransigence of the israeli government. about 3 years ago. it was all over the news./
I never claimed that there is no intransigence in Israeli government
we are talking about a specific case regarding ownership now don’t divert the subject.

/ha! the settler makes a claim (land with no people, poeple with no land!) and you make assumptions based on this? what planet are you on?/

On the planet where people fight over resources routinely.

/interest or disinterest is not proof of anything. if you have any evidence either b’tselem or peace now have ever fabricated anything or are not credible produce it. don’t base your argument on ..nothing./

Of cause it is both Betzelm and Peace Now are anti settlements movements
in Israel.The object and have objected to the apriori.
They all want them to be uprooted and the settlers population to return to
Israel proper.
Giving credibility to their reports makes as much sense as to NGO Monitor
or the Tamimi family.

This is a summary of the petition to the supreme court by Michael Sfard
from Yesh Din on behalf of the residents who claim ownership.
Lots’ of legal language but it conveys their side of the story.
(Couldn’t find any collaboration in the factual part of the document
that the petitioners indeed own the spring , it just asserts that without any
reference)

Still can’t find the whether the Court has ruled on this petition
it’s from 2011 so i guess they still haven’t.

I am looking for the states reply to the court i am not sure it’s public.

Are claiming you Shmuel that Peace now is an impartial disinterested party to the conflict?

Both Peace Now’s Settlement Watch and B’tselem have impeccable records of checking, double-checking and cross-checking facts. Their reputations and objectives depend upon it. One cannot say the same, however, for settler organisations – caught time and again in lies and outright falsifications, which don’t seem to hurt their cause (with the exception of a few small and yet-to-be-proven setbacks such as Givat ha-Ulpana and Migron or Beit Yonatan). There is therefore no equivalence here – unless of course one believes that there is no such thing as objective reality, but you have reassured us that that is not the case.

Ps. Just found the Hebrew version of the petition it is more extensive and does mention documents that the petitioners presented to prove ownership to the land.

Thanks for taking the time and effort to track that down. It was and is entirely logical that they would have documents to prove their claim, and now you know for sure that they did provide more than just a verbal claim to the spring.

Oleg, given that the settlers clearly DON’T own the spring, and that the villagers have documents that claim they do own it, are you willing to agree that the settlers have no right to prohibit the villagers from using the spring?

/Oleg, given that the settlers clearly DON’T own the spring, and that the villagers have documents that claim they do own it, are you willing to agree that the settlers have no right to prohibit the villagers from using the spring?/

The settlers never had any right to prohibit anything they are not the sovereign the Civil Administration is.
The spring
is at best public property that should be freely accessed by all residents of the area (unless of course it’s proven private property).

If you read the summary of the petition it’s the civil administration that prohibits access and from what i can tell only on certain days of the week ,
like Fridays during demonstrations.

Anyway i would love to read the states response but it’s nowhere to be found.
Or see some photos of the springs before the settlers renovation.

OlegR says: So what we see here is another attempt at provocation
by the “Activists” this time using small children because it looks so much better on camera and if they do get hurt by any chance it’s even better.
So what we see here is another attempt at provocation
by the “Activists” this time using small children because it looks so much better on camera and if they do get hurt by any chance it’s even better.
A morally questionable tactic but i guess the end justifies the means”

That was your reaction to the Itamar murders, right? The settlers had put their children in there so that when the Palestinians murdered them, the Palestinians would look bad? Was the morally questionable tactic justified by the end that time as well?

“Is this a sick joke or do you really mean what you just wrote? In that case ‘morally questionable’ won’t do – your text goes beyond that.”

No, now, Dutch, try to be a little patient. Don’t you know Phil Weiss has decided to call it “apartheid” more often? Why, by the time the last Palestinian is, for all practical purposes, gone, Phil might even call it “ethnic cleasing”, and then it’s watch out, Zionists!

Oleg’s comment accusing the Palestinians of provocation and using children for PR purposes applies equally to the leaders of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama in the the early 60s. This was the center of the civil rights movement in Birmingham. Street demonstrations were organized out of that church and the demonstrators were mostly young adults and teenagers. They also taught Sunday school to young children. They did this in the face of Ku Klux Klan opposition who used dynamite as one of their primary weapons.

Then on that fateful Sunday in September 1963 all the ingredients came together and the KKK was provoked to blow up the church killing the four children attending Sunday school. We all know the story — an enraged world denounced the church leadership for their endangering children’s lives and the civil rights movement never recovered.

because like..you read minds. what i am aware of is the soldier did not say it was illegal to fuck with 3, 4, or 7 year olds and he would be arrested if he took the law/military rule/occupatiom into his own hands. you know why? because settlers are perfectly accustomed to ordering the iof around. where have you been?

so, according to oleg there was no intonations of the soldier saying it was illegal to fuck with 3, 4, or 7 year olds and he would be arrested if he took the law/military rule/occupatiom into his own hands and a soldiers job is to wave off a settler who is ‘bugging him?’ this is what you are saying about the messiah’s donkeys? that he was ‘waving off’ the settler guy. more like appeasing him if you asked me. or taking orders. or did you miss the part where the soldier asked someone off screen if jews were allowed there because the settler wanted the camera person gone too. or did you miss that part?

Do you also know about the Arabic curses that have seeped into Hebrew usage in Israel? I don’t think that calling pre-teens ‘ya bint sharmoota’ or the daughter of a whore is said with any kind of well-intentioned intonation. Nor did the soldiers object to that or the other epithets being spewed by one of your and their fellow colonists.

You are aware that the soldiers “No problem”
was meant to wave off this settler guy that was bugging him , right?”
>>>>>>>>

Already said I am willing to allow he said it to forestall a bigger incident and defuse the settler.
But that doesn’t change anything.
You give us exactly what the Israeli zionist mentality is and has been….”look at how they make us kill them, oh pity poor us” .

I don’t think Shmuel disagreed with me on my translation or interpretation of the dialog between the settler guy and the soldier.

The soldier’s “no problem” is definitely a “whatever you say, fella, as long as you let me do my job – which is to keep these kids out of your face”. Soldiers don’t want confrontation with the settler military cadets they are supposed to be protecting (and who will probably be wearing the same uniform and doing the same job in a few month’s time). It’s much easier and safer to push around Palestinian kids.

>> Soldiers don’t want confrontation with the settler military cadets they are supposed to be protecting … It’s much easier and safer to push around Palestinian kids.

These Zio-supremacist “soldiers” are perfect aggressor-victim reflections of the supremacist “Jewish State” whose occupation and oppression they execute and uphold: Aggressive enough to assault the weak and secure stolen land, but forever the unfortunate victims of Palestinian resentment. :-(

>> You do realize Shmuel that this is all one big stupid cat and mouse show for
the benefit of MW readers right?

Only a hateful and immoral Zio-supremacist could so coldly reduce the supremacist “Jewish State’s” ON-GOING occupation of Palestine and oppression of Palestinians to “one big stupid cat and mouse game”. Figures.

Only a hateful and immoral Zio-supremacist could so coldly reduce the supremacist “Jewish State’s” ON-GOING occupation of Palestine and oppression of Palestinians to “one big stupid cat and mouse game”.

C’mon, eljay. Oleg’s been extremely generous in his constructive criticism of Palestinian resistance, today (first BDS, now the resistance at Nabi Saleh). Self-imprisonment and unpublicised spontaneous response to specific acts of oppression. Brilliant. Let’s make sure they get the memo in Ramallah and Gaza.

I am not doubting the sincerity of emotions of the participants just the sincerity of the situation.

LOL, OlegR, I recall participating in a debate a few years ago in which a Zionist claimed that the IDF would never deliberately expose Palestinian children to harm. By that time, fortunately, an insincere photographer in the Occupied Territories published a picture of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy who had been bound to the windshield of an Isreali jeep to prevent the vehicle from being pelted with stones. Soon, other pictures and videos began to arise showing teenagers used as human shields, and talk about IDF kindness towards children accordingly vanished.

We need to insincerily go with cameras and record the IDF’s behavior because otherwise you’ll deny what’s going on.

>> Oleg’s been extremely generous in his constructive criticism of Palestinian resistance …

His criticism reminds me of RW’s disgusting “liberal Zionist” apologetics: Palestinians must only “humanize ‘the Other'” and make “better wheels”. To undertake any form of resistance against their occupier and oppressor other than the most meek and inoffensive (to Zio-supremacists) is to be “maximalist” and “destabilizing” and perhaps even a comparable aggressor.

But if the Palestinians do the nothing that Zio-supremacists expect them to do, the latter turn around and say “See? There’s no problem here. The Palestinians aren’t protesting, so they must be content under Israeli occup…*ahem*…under Israeli friendship.”

See, this is where it’s clear that a Zio-supremacist like OlegR is one of two things:
– simply far too stupid to realize that “spectacles” of the type he sees in Nabi Salah happen because he and his supremacist “Jewish State” are illegally occupying Palestinian land far outside of Israel’s borders; or
– perfectly well aware that “spectacles” of the type he sees in Nabi Salah happen because he and his supremacist “Jewish State” are illegally occupying Palestinian land far outside of Israel’s borders…and he just doesn’t care.

The former means he’s just a pathetic little tool of his supremacist state; the latter means he is, in fact, a hateful and immoral participant in the activities of his supremacist state.

It’s clear – to me at least – that he is very much the latter. And – both sadly and quite disturbingly – he’s actually proud of it.

“It’s clear – to me at least – that he is very much the latter. And – both sadly and quite disturbingly – he’s actually proud of it.”

And what is so ROTFL about it is that he thinks he is a good spokesman for Israel, one who will attract more Jews to the Zionist cause, and strengthen those already committed to Zionism. Or else why is he doing this?
Oops, I guess I shouldn’t have said that, it makes Jews out ungrateful. I mean here’s OlegR inspiring and leading all those Jews and others to correct thinking, and not one of them writes in to thank him. C’mon, all you guys, hows about a little love for old OlegR!

As you say, eljay, it’s the assumptions in zio-speak that are the most galling.

Principally that Palestinians protest just to protest and/or to intentionally manipulate events in order to make life slightly less comfortable for the people whose opinions actually matter.

Secondarily, that Occupation isn’t all that bad. Even 60 year’s worth. After all, no one in Israel is affected. Life is grand on our side. How bad can it really be on the other side of a wall that we cannot see past, and rarely venture past other than to militarily enforce a state of being that we believe, in our cloistered experience, isn’t all that bad because life is grand on our side.

Puke-worthy, but nonetheless the seemingly accepted starting point for discussion. Policy or dinner party.

Annie, the settler who is abusing the IDF soldiers and the young Tamimi girls hurls some insults in mixed Arabic and Hebrew and the Arabic is not well-translated. At the 0:44 mark, he is translated as saying: “ya son of a bitch, ya motherfucker, ya fucking ass”. ” ya bint sharmoota” does not fit any of those translations, it literally means “daughter of a whore” and he is addressing the Tamimi girls, not the Israeli soldiers.

He is not talking to the children he is talking to the cameramen.
Again lack of knowledge of the language shows.
Innanas as well.

More likely your lack of knowledge of Arabic. “Bint” means daughter, not son. Either the cameraMAN is actually a woman, or the settler was swearing at the children. Or both. The settler responds with his curse after one of the Tamimi girls says something, and he is not looking at the cameraperson when he utters it. You’re in denial mode , Oleg.

Also, one would think that with this “provocation” of cameras recording what is being said that the settler might just watch his mouth. But it doesn’t seem like he sees anything wrong with what he says. He certainly knows he’s being recorded.

Language, OlegR, or culture? You know, some people have this wierd idea about moderating their language around children. So maybe it’s just ignorance of Israeli culture. After all, it was language like this which made you than ma…well, whatever you are today. Why should any child be denied the same privilege.
No doubt you made sure your kids had the same privilege.

Tree listen carefully again he didn’t say “bint”
he said “ben” , he is not cursing in pure arabic he is cursing in hebrew using certain arabic slurs that are common in the language.
Ben Sharmuta, Ben Zona, Kus Ommok (sorry ladies) etc.
Again you can ask Shmuel .

I don’t think the settlers cares all that much that he is being recorded.

Tree listen carefully again he didn’t say “bint”
he said “ben” , he is not cursing in pure arabic he is cursing in hebrew using certain arabic slurs that are common in the language.

OK, I think you are probably right about him saying “ben” and not “bint”. Given that he was clearly talking about the children when he talked about “f*cking them over” it doesn’t make it much better that he’s swearing at the cameraperson, but I get your point.

I don’t think the settlers cares all that much that he is being recorded.

An yet you claim it is a “provocation” to record events on camera. If he doesn’t care then how can he be”provoked” by it? My understanding of the reasoning behind BTselem giving cameras to Palestinians in the West Bank under pressure from Israeli settlers is two-fold. One is to record what happens so it is not simply a “he said, she said” situation, but a documented occurrence, and two is to hopefully prevent the more violent incidents from happening in the first place since the violence would likewise be recorded. You say that you don’t think the settler cares all that much that he is being recorded, but its certainly possible that the camera, rather than “provoking” him, actually helped restrain him.

Inanna says: “Annie, the settler who is abusing the IDF soldiers and the young Tamimi girls hurls some insults in mixed Arabic and Hebrew and the Arabic is not well-translated. At the 0:44 mark, he is translated as saying: “ya son of a bitch, ya motherfucker, ya fucking ass”. ” ya bint sharmoota” does not fit any of those translations, it literally means “daughter of a whore” and he is addressing the Tamimi girls, not the Israeli soldiers.”

This reminds me of something. The Palestinians have been subjected to this sort of abuse — and considerably worse — for sixty-odd years now. It really does seem to be a constant barrage of insults, humiliation, physical abuse, terror, and dispossession. These two girls scored at least three of these experiences just in this episode.

And yet, it is seriously proposed that they not hate the Jews. That if the Jews ever lift their foot off their neck, they should just get up, and their eyes moist with brotherly love, hug their erstwhile oppressors.

I don’t think that’s very likely to happen. If it does, the Palestinian people are the moral giants of human history.

…but I’m a cynic, and I don’t think the Palestinian people are the moral giants of human history. So I think that rather than damn-fooling about, the thing to do is organize the evacuation of the Jewish population of Palestine so it can happen with a minimum of bloodshed.

“I don’t think that’s very likely to happen. If it does, the Palestinian people are the moral giants of human history.”

Have you read Phil’s reports, and the reports of many other people, from Palestine? Well, get used to a crick in your neck, pygmy, you just may be staring up for quite a while, looking up at the faces of giants.
I know, I know, hard to think anybody could be a better example of forebearance, compassion and morality than you, Colin and any reports there are such people should be immediately discounted.
And BTW, who do you think has the will and means to carry out such an evacuation? I’d really like to know.

“Yes, I do doubt that Palestinians are morally much better than anyone else. Why should they be,”

Why they should be, I can’t explain, I don’t know them. But it’s becoming apparent to me that they very well may be, and that what they have already endured and done is a pretty good indicator that something quite unusual, but not impossible is going on there. I once felt exactly as you do about it, and for the same reason, it’s not easy to conceive of people who are better than me and the people I know. But that may very well be the case. Why is it so important to you that they not be moral giants? If it turns out to be true that they are moral giants (and the indications are pretty good, and how they have comported themselves so far could get them the “moral giant” award in my book), I think it will be very inspiring and hopeful and empowering for everyone.
Gee, Colin, you couldn’t be accepting the point of view that the Palestinians have been making war on the Zionists since they got there, can you? And if they haven’t, that puts them pretty well up in the morality class in my estimation. But you’re free to expect from them (the Palestinians) whatever you want. But I’m sure they can at least exceed your expectations.

“Why should they be, and what in that justifies your line of continual verbal abuse of all and sundry?”

Well, Colin, old horse, I freely admit I have lot’s of problems, most of which can be found here. But I don’t hear voices coming out of the comment box. I just see black type on a white background. Nothing “verbal” in site.
And at least I don’t go around plumping for the Raj.

One of the girls had her mother arrested (the other, her aunt). Did this happen before or after the arrest?

By the way, this video is a perfect illustration for “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.” Savage little girls and the civilized man.

It also reminds me “Il deserto dei Tartari”, a movie of Valerio Zurlini, showing a lone outpost of some anonymous empire. “The mission of the garrison is to prevent a possible incursion by the fearsome Tartars, coming from beyond the desert.”

So important this violence towards children is getting out on video’s. Peace and justice activist Art Gish used to tell us endless stories like this of the violence he witnessed coming out of the settlers towards Palestinian children. Illegal settlers ordering the IDF around.

[EXCERPTS] . . . Born in Tel Aviv, Ms Siew served in the army, took a university degree, then a teacher’s diploma. Thirty-six years ago, she took the tough decision to emigrate to London, telling her parents: “I won’t come back until there’s peace.” Ms Siew, who is now 64, remains an Israeli citizen but now lives with her British husband in Hebden Bridge. She has kept to her word, except that each autumn she comes back to stay in her hometown with her relatives and spends each day of the two-month harvest season picking olives on Palestinian farmland in the West Bank.
And Ms Siew does that for a purpose. Up on the ridge above us, you can see the red roofs of Itamar, a notably hard-line Jewish settlement, and she is here to help protect the Palestinian farmers from the threat of settler violence which has so often scarred the olive harvests.. . . Last year, she was in a group in the South Hebron Hills confronted by settlers who fired shots from a pistol and an M16 assault rifle, despite the presence of the army and police. “Then one of the soldiers said, ‘Look, one of them is coming down with a jug of water for you’. The settler emptied the jug over me. It was full of human shit.”. . .

P.S. I think it it is obvious that the soldier was complicit in this dumping of excrement on Ms. Siew. He undoubtedly knew what the settler was up to (perhaps from having seen it done before, or at least having heard about it), but as far as he was concerned it was “no problem”. Not only did he not warn Ms. Siew of the imminent shower of sewage, or attempt to intervene and put a stop to it, he actually aided and abetted the settler by misleading Ms. Siew as to what the settler was up to.
Don’t you just know that he and his soldier buddies had quite a good, raucous laugh* about this later on when he regaled them with his very juicy tale about what happens to foreign Jewish do-gooders on his watch!

* FROM HAARETZ, 11/13/08:

(excerpt) . . . Last week, soldiers from the Golani infantry brigade posted a video on YouTube depicting a blindfolded Palestinian being forced to repeat phrases in Hebrew as the soldiers manning the checkpoint laugh in the background. . .
One of the lines is: “Golani will bring you a log to stick up your ass.”
As the detainee repeats the words, the soldiers are heard laughing raucously in the background. . .

RE: “I think it it is obvious that the soldier was complicit in this dumping of excrement on Ms. Siew.” – me (above)

RONI SHAKED*:

“The job of Israeli police is not to prevent Israeli violence against Palestinians or protect Palestinians. It’s job is to look the other way when that happens and not to prosecute it seriously if that proves necessary. If the leaders, citizens and police, have allowed their nation to become an authoritarian racist regime, this is the natural result. Not an anomaly. . .”

* “Shaked’s bona fides are impressive: in the 1970s he ‘ran’ Palestinian agents for the Shabak [Shin Bet]. As such, he is a Shabak man at heart, though he is now a journalist.” ~ Richard Silverstein

[EXCERPTS] The issue of Jewish terror and how the Israeli state fights or doesn’t fight it is extremely complicated. If you view it from a liberal Zionist perspective, as people like Shimon Peres and most American Jewish leaders do, you only understand part of the problem and you believe–or hope–that Israeli democracy will eventually right itself and enforce the rule of law. But when you understand this issue as a symptom of the rise of the permanent far-right majority which has hijacked Israel and destroyed its democracy, you realize that Jewish terror is not something the State can or will oppose because it is an organic expression of the ideology of those who dominate the nation. No, I am not accusing Bibi Netanyahu of being a terrorist (though a number of Israeli prime ministers were before they dressed themselves in suits and became “statesmen”). I am accusing him of being an accessory after the fact because the Jewish terrorists are the ultimate expression of the wishes of the State.
All this by way of reporting to you about an important article by Roni Shaked, Yediot’s Palestinian affairs correspondent. . .
. . . His article is an evisceration of the Jewish terror unit of the Shabak. He says the department has made itself a mockery by its inability or unwillingness to address the Jewish terror underground in the West Bank. In addition to the agency itself, he blames the prime minister for being satisfied with such a record of miserable failure.Here is a summary of the article with my own comments interspersed:

Now in a period of relative calm regarding Palestinian terror is the time Yoram Cohen should be expected to redouble his efforts to address the rampage of Jewish terror that has afflicted Israel: the price tag attack, the 17 mosque burnings, desecration of Muslim graves, destruction of property, racist graffiti scrawled on the walls of Muslim holy sites, and even attacks on IDF bases in the Territories. Not to mention that vast increase in armed attacks on Palestinians.
The latest of these was the brutal “lynch” of three Palestinians by a scores of drunken Israeli ultra-nationalist youth who prowled Jerusalem last weekend seeking victims. When they found their victims they pounded one to within an inch of his life. He remains in hospital in a coma. It isn’t known whether he will suffer brain damage. Yediot reported yesterday that Palestinian shop workers in Zion Square called 911 and requested that police be called to stop the incipient mob. A policeman came and told witnesses that there was little he could do. Eventually he left. Shortly thereafter, the main show began and the wilding took its most brutal form. Don’t be shocked. Remember what I wrote above. The job of Israeli police is not to prevent Israeli violence against Palestinians or protect Palestinians. It’s job is to look the other way when that happens and not to prosecute it seriously if that proves necessary. If the leaders, citizens and police, have allowed their nation to become an authoritarian racist regime, this is the natural result. Not an anomaly, as liberals like Shimon Peres or some readers here would argue. . .

RE: “The job of Israeli police is not to prevent Israeli violence against Palestinians or protect Palestinians. It’s job is to look the other way when that happens and not to prosecute it seriously if that proves necessary.” ~ Roni Shaked (from above)

“In a government of law, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”

[EXCERPT] Last Saturday, a B’Tselem video camera captured an incident of settler violence that began with rocks being thrown at Palestinians near the village of Asira al-Qibliya in the outskirts of Nablus, and ended with live shots fired by the settlers and a wounded Palestinian youth.Anyone who saw the video could easily make out the IDF soldiers standing next to the settlers, doing nothing to stop them.Those watching from the sidelines may have been surprised by the useless stance of the soldiers. But anyone who understands the reality in the Occupied Territories well knows that that this is just another example of the long-entrenched paradigm that constitutes the basis of IDF activity on the ground: We are not here to protect Palestinians. Not when the settlers burn their olive trees or throw rocks at them. And not even when settlers shoot at them.
The most extreme outcome of this paradigm was the massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in 1994. . .

Straightline that Independent article is amazing. I was struck by this statement:

“We were sort of indifferent. It becomes a kind of habit. Patrols with beatings happened on a daily basis. We were really going at it. It was enough for you to give us a look that we didn’t like, straight in the eye, and you’d be hit on the spot. We got to such a state and were so sick of being there.”

This was made by a Breaking the Silence witness. I do not wish to criticize him but this so much reminds me of Golda Meyer’s statement about the horrors the Palestinians inflict on IDF troops. The worse part is the how the Arabs force these incredibly moral boys into the terrible position of exterminating Palestinians while they sit behind their guns with tears in their eyes (or something like that, the original quote is out there).

“When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. ”

Another Golda Zio-favourite is:

“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us”

It isn’t any wonder Zionists don’t think of Palestinians as humans.

While we’re at it, here’s another Golda goldie:

“There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”

Off Course! They should just let the settlers deal with it, huh, Oleg?
They are “equipped” for the job? The job of defending their own land?

Oleg, do you really think the number of Jewish sociopaths (and low-intelligence Jewish sociopaths, at that) you can attract with your tough-guy pose is surpasses the damage you do by appointing your tongue-tied ESL self as Zionism’s spokesman?

I should mention, for any new readers, that a comment archive can be reached by clicking a commenter’s name. Click “OlegR” and you won’t have to read more than a page or two to realise what you are dealing with. When pushed to a corner, he always reaches for “but I myself, don’t like it” as if that should make it all better.

But a guys gotta wonder. MW is gonna help drive the Zionists out of the occupied territories, but they can’t keep them out of the comment section?

/Off Course! They should just let the settlers deal with it, huh, Oleg?
They are “equipped” for the job? The job of defending their own land?/

No the police should deal with it.

/Oleg, do you really think the number of Jewish sociopaths (and low-intelligence Jewish sociopaths, at that) you can attract with your tough-guy pose is surpasses the damage you do by appointing your tongue-tied ESL self as Zionism’s spokesman?/

Do you think Mooser that the language you and some others here use
with me helps the Palestinians in some fashion?
Oy Wey indeed

/But a guys gotta wonder. MW is gonna help drive the Zionists out of the occupied territories, but they can’t keep them out of the comment section?/

“Do you think Mooser that the language you and some others here use
with me helps the Palestinians in some fashion?”

What a man! What a fine upstanding mensch. If I talk bad to OlegR he’s promising to take it out on the Palestinians! Now that, my friends, is a Zionist gentleman!
So tell me bubele what did I say that hurt you so deeply you hate Palestinians for it?

Mooser says: “What a man! What a fine upstanding mensch. If I talk bad to OlegR he’s promising to take it out on the Palestinians! Now that, my friends, is a Zionist gentleman!
So tell me bubele what did I say that hurt you so deeply you hate Palestinians for it?”

You’re being a complete hypocrite. You simply use this site to attack and abuse people to the extent you calculate you can get away with it.

OlegR’s views don’t matter to you at all per se — still less do they have anything to do with the abuse you heap on him when he expresses them. It’s just that you realize that they are unpopular enough so that you can get away with abusing him to an extent that you couldn’t get away with abusing someone whose views were more accepted by the community here.

I’m not going to start carrying a torch for Oleg here of all people — but you’re pathetic. You’re a disturbed child who has found a place where he can be rude to people with impunity.

Stopping conscription would be a good start. Using the same civil laws for settlers and Palestinians. Applying equal rights. You could try any of those things. What other role does the IDF have, other than repress Palestinians and act as an occupying police force for bigoted settlers? It isn’t an army in the normal sense of the word. It is more like the stasi. Or you could join Breaking the Silence and do something worthwhile, instead of shrugging your shoulders and spending all your time denying and minimising the violence. And is soldier’s morale that it is all that concerns you? lol

Good ideas are a dime-a-dozen for Israel. I mean, they do so many things wrong, it’s easy to think of things they could do better (although restricting the IDF to a hard core of high-paid psychopaths and murders is a good idea is beyond me. Look at the volunteer US force) Oh, God, would the Israelis love to run their occupation with volunteers and mercenaries, their dream come true.
The real question is who and what is going to make them do any of it.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that, although these settlers are ostensibly in the West Bank because they’re deeply religious, there’s nothing “holy” about the way they behave. Lots of foul language, not an ounce of humility. Oh well, just another contradiction for liberal zionists to balance in their pea brains.

“because they’re deeply religious, there’s nothing “holy” about the way they behave.”

ROTFL, sorry for this, chinese box, but having grown up with this, I can just hear the response: ‘Where do you get off criticising another person’s religion, you hater! And besides, they just said they are very religious, they never said they were self-sacrificing saints or anything’. I gotta laugh, if I don’t wanna sob. We’re supposed to be so super-smart, but nobody in Israel ever figured out that a cruel and prolonged occupation with annexation (or worse) as its obvious aim, is gonna be a tough sell in the day of the Internet, video and intercontinental jet aircraft?
They couldn’t see that? Oh I guess that must be a 16IQ point conclusion or something, and 15 just isn’t enough.

Can someone clear up the following for me?
During the time of the roman occupation of Palestina, (yes, they called it Palestina, not Israel or Judea), the jews spoke aramaish, not hebrew anymore.
Where from comes this sudden love for the hebrew languange?

“Talking about modern hebrew, someone – mainly Eliezer Ben Yehuda – dug it out in the XIX century, I guess in order to stress a presumed, since centuries forgotten, origin.”

Interestingly, as with so much else about Zionism, this was hardly a unique development.

All over Europe people were reviving or attempting to revive dead or dying languages as a marker of national identity.

Modern Greek, for one. People had to be taught it. What they actually spoke was ‘wrong.’ In some cases, what they spoke wasn’t Greek at all, but Slavic vernaculars. This was a project that began in the early nineteenth century and was still demonstrably incomplete at the time of World War Two.

Gaelic was a similar struggle. The banner’s still being held high on that one — but the bitter truth is no one speaks Gaelic anymore.

Similar efforts were made with Occitan and Breton. Since they weren’t state-sponsored at all, they pretty much crashed and burned. However, I’m confident there were other efforts.

If one reads ‘Peasants into Frenchman,’ one realizes that modern French can be thought of as one such project — albeit one so successful that few realize it wasn’t always that way. The language wasn’t actually spoken by a majority of ‘Frenchmen’ until well into the nineteenth century. Public schools, conscription, etc had to be deployed to make them speak it.

The ‘revival’ of Hebrew was one of these projects. As with so much else about Zionism, it was a child of nineteenth century racial nationalism.

“…as with so much else about Zionism, this was hardly a unique development.
All over Europe people were reviving or attempting to revive dead or dying languages as a marker of national identity.”

Not at all. This comment itself is an implant by Zionist propaganda.

The Ashkenaze who started the “revival” project of making a conlang (=constructed ie artificial language) with some elements of dead (=no one’s mother tongue) language Hebrew had a living, thriving mother tongue with a flourishing literature. They proceeded to thoroughly kill it in the name of a non-existant nation. None of the other examples you brought have anything to do with this. [Greek, for example, has continually and seamlessly developed in the course of history; what happened at Independence, with a faint parallel to H revival, was only the contempt of reactionaries and clergy against the *living* language; as for non-Greek tongues they have always been spoken in parallel]
So, “Modern Hebrew” is nothing but a hybrid monster constructed by a reactionary racial supremacist clique to erase the real cultural history of Yiddish-speaking peoples.

It is a bit more complicated. For 300-400 years a large group of Ashkenazi lived in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth where they had a large demographic expansion, so these Ashkenazi formed the majority. The Ashkenazi of Germany and Bohemia apparently “assimilated” to standard German.

In 18-th and 19-th century Ashkenazi of the Commonwealth moved in many directions, Russia, new lands of Ukraine, Romania and Hungary. In all those places they were usually bilingual (or multi-lingual, Yiddish, local vernacular and the imperial language) , but then they were increasingly switching to national languages like Polish, Hungarian or Russian.

sardelapasti says: “Not at all. This comment itself is an implant by Zionist propaganda.”

Oh I don’t think so. The distinctions you make are valid — but at the same time, the revival of Hebrew coincides with similar revivals all over Europe, and all these revivals had the same motive.

They were all intended to buttress the validity of nationalist aspirations. Whatever one may think of Israel, I don’t think Hebrew really stands out from the crowd in any way here. After all, if the Jews had a perfectly good language already, so did the Irish. Similarly, if Hebrew was definitively dead, so was Occitan. If those who espoused Hebrew sought to make their homeland in a place other than where they lived, the promoters of ‘Greece’ eventually more or less compelled a lot of people who didn’t speak anything remotely related to Greek to become ‘Greeks.’

This isn’t to justify Zionism or Israel in any way. It’s merely to note that as with just about everything else about the movement, it didn’t spring fully-formed out of nowhere, but actually was a Jewish variation on ideas that were pretty common at the time.

After hundreds of years of occupation by austrians, russians, turks and germans, where the official language the language of the occupier was, liberated nations returned to their native language. In private they always spoke that language.

Hebrew on the other hand was not spoken by anyone, accept by a few rabbis, the ashkenazy jews spoke yiddish, german, polish, hungarian, etc.
The introduction of the hebrew means they had to learn a new language, contrary to the other nations who always spoke their old one.
No comparision whatsoever.

It is always the Palestinians who are prepared to remonstrate and talk while the settlers response is classic cowardice, acting in confrontational groups under the protective eyes of the IDF. When the day of reckoning comes my guess is we’ll have a lot of wailing and tearing of hair but they’ll scatter like autumn leaves

Children frequently soiled themselves, according to the testimonies. “I remember hearing him shitting his pants … I also remember some other time when someone pissed in his pants. I just became so indifferent to it, I couldn’t care less. I heard him do it, I witnessed his embarrassment. I also smelled it. But I didn’t care,” said another.

For some more evidence of the IOF’s provocations (as opposed to Oleg’s attempt to call Palestinian existence and use of water as a ‘provocation’), scroll down to the bottom of these excerpts from Breaking The Silence, and read what Oleg’s mates get up to on patrols, and the fun they have beating up people:

These people are the existential threat to Israel. You can feel it in the wind. It’s going to be ugly. No one will help them. That guy Dayan, the one profiled in the NYT the other day, he’ll be on the first flight out of Ben Gurion the moment the tide turns. Want to bet?

“These people are the existential threat to Israel. You can feel it in the wind. It’s going to be ugly. No one will help them.”

Fail to understand your comment. I thought all of the GOI and the IDF is behind those people? No one has ever failed to come through for them, right? Only two instances of settlements being dismantled, IIANM.

My perception, for what it’s worth, is that Israel will implode and when it does it will be each for himself with settler outposts the first to be abandoned. If Israel is driven to defend its existence it is hardly likely to do so anywhere like Beit El

Tear-gas, as well as a foul liquid called “The Skunk”, which is shot from a water cannon, is often used inside the built up area of the village, or even directly pointed into houses, in a way that allows no refuge for the uninvolved residents of the village, including children and the elderly. The interior of at least one house caught fire and was severely damaged after soldiers shot a tear-gas projectile through its windows.

Between January 2010 to date, the Israeli Army has carried more than 100 arrests of people detained for 24 hours or more on suspicions related to protest in the village of Nabi Saleh, including those of women and of children as young as 11 years old. Dozens more were detained for shorter periods. Two of the village’s protest leaders – Bassem and Naji Tamimi – arrested on protest-organizing related charges, were recognized by the European Union as human rights defenders. Bassem Tamimi was also declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

The mindset of the settlers reminds me of nothing so much as the Ralph Fiennes character in “Schindler’s List” who could shoot at camp prisoners from his balcony for the fun of it. They weren’t people per se, but rather amusing targets.

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